


Anamnesis

by sagesins



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: And there will be unexpected pain along the way I am sorry, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Keith Deserved Better, Lotor deserved better, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:12:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagesins/pseuds/sagesins
Summary: Keith remembers the war. He remembers those who suffered and those who died. He remembers Lotor was among them. So how can Lotor be standing before Keith all these years later? And the better question; why?





	Anamnesis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherryburlesque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryburlesque/gifts).



By this point in his life Keith has seen the impossible come to fruition many times and traveled through endless extraordinary galaxies that he lacks the vocabulary to describe. Countless unbelievable things having happened during his time as part of Voltron, and even more having happened after he left the team and Earth behind.

He told the team of his travels during his visits and on-again off-again correspondences, but even the pictures he shared did little justice to convey things such as the majesty of the peach-and-azure nebula at the center of a collapsing solar system. Same as he struggled to describe ethereal peoples he had helped save from that very same galaxy who only saw that breathtaking nebula of glittering clouds as poisonous gas suffocating their home.

Keith has met the most garish of brutes who would sob inconsolably if they hurt a leaf, and the most adorable of fluff-balls who were more ravenous than shitty low tier Z rate movie monsters with buckets of fake blood thrown around their cheap sets.

To say Keith was surprised by anything anymore would be a stretch to say the least, though that wasn’t to say he wasn’t touched by each and every new experience. Just better equipped to deal with the unexpected.

In this case, for the first time in many years, Keith isn’t sure he’s equipped to deal with the situation. None of them are.

“He seems like the real deal,” Krolia says blandly. She isn’t enthused at the discovery, though she never is when it’s anything involving remnants of the war. This isn’t quite a remnant, but then none of them know quite what to call it.

“I assure you, I am very much so real,” the not-quite-but-kind-of-remnant says with a cavalier air, looking bored, sounding beyond frustrated. Justly so, they’ve put him through a volley of interviews filled with suspicious questions that even they aren’t certain the right answers to.

Still, no one is happy with the answers he has to give. They’re all too distrustful after how many ways their enemies of the past tried to trick them. And while this man may not be an enemy of their past, he certainly wears the face of one.

“Even if your intentions are purely in the pursuit of knowledge,” Kolivan grumbles, arms crossed as he glares at the man across the table from the three leaders of the Blades. “What you intend to do with such knowledge is still unknown. Selfish desires have driven our realities to nearly be destroyed once before. As you claim to recall bearing witness to.”

He did claim as such. Many times. And to be fair when Voltron was in pursuit of Haggar across realities toward the end, no one really had time to worry about being subtle on the matter of busting through multiple innocent realities. So a lot of peoples did see all reality nearly end once at the hands of otherworldly mechanical giants and probably were left wondering.

One such witness now sits across the table from them, asking for little but putting them all on high alert with the fact that he is even here to be asking anything at all.

“And I shall not know what I plan to do with such knowledge until I know what such knowledge entails, now shan't I?” He’s cheeky, as Krolia put it. Less severe than his counterpart from this reality had been, but still as quick of wit and equally as skilled at hiding his thoughts behind a charming visage.

Supposedly anyways. Keith never got a chance to deal much with the Prince from this reality. Most of what he knows are from his friends stories and recollections of various members of the Blade of Marmora who had infiltrated the Empire during the war.

The man across the table gives a weary sigh, leaning forward just enough to pillow his cheek in the palm of his hand, not seemingly bothered by Kolivan’s glare enough to not show how bored he is.

He’s exhausted too but he’s holding it together and attempting to be polite even under the circumstances. At the very least Keith does count that as a point in his favor.

But then, supposedly the other they once knew was just as cool under similar circumstances, so perhaps this too was all just a show.

For several minutes there’s contemplative silence around the table. Krolia watches the man across the way like a bird of prey, waiting for a mistake or a slip-up to be made so she can act on it. Kolivan glares like a cat, trying to pick apart everything he sees, growling under his breath occasionally when he finds something he doesn't like but doesn't merit speaking about.

And Keith is somewhere between the two, both figuratively and literally, keeping an eye on the man across from them. Every word, every breath, every minute shift in his chair. Every time his eyes dart to take in something Keith watches him file it away in his head before returning to the question and answer play they’ve been throwing back and forth for days now.

After a few more beats of silence the man across the table cracks, and his shoulders sag as he leans a little more over the table between them. He stares at Keith, seeming to catch on that he is the de facto leader in this trio. Even with his mask up Keith stares unblinking as the man across the table stares back.

“My pursuit of knowledge is purely shellfish in nature, it is true,” he admits once more. It earns Krolia tapping her nail once on the table between them but nothing more, so he continues driving home the same reasoning he has been for the last fortnight. “I was not sent to gather information for some vast diabolical empire. Nor was I sent on some grand espionage mission for your lions or anything thereof. I am here purely to sate my own curiosities, as a man of science.”

Krolia looks to Keith first, waiting on his say. Kolivan waits too, but he refuses to cease glaring at the man across from them. Keith typically turns to them for their input and trusts their judgment more than anything, but for the difficult calls they have begun turning to him in recent years. He’s proud that he’s earned their respect when it comes to his judgment, but for this he’s torn between fearing making a catastrophic mistake or doing the thing he wants to most.

Keith continues to stare at the man across the table, watching from behind his mask. Their prisoner wears the face of a man, but Keith only sees a reflection of the war staring back.

He wishes they had more to ask. Wishes they knew the right questions. The right answers. But even then Keith knows it wouldn’t be good enough. There are no answers here that would settle any of their minds, right or wrong. This whole situation is unexpected, unorthodox really. It’s not unfathomable, it’s just not something any of them are really prepared to deal with.

And yet, here it is. Here he is. And while their memories raise alarm bells, the reality before them seems far less sinister than the past, and none of them quite know how to proceed.

So now, the question that demands answers from them. A man’s freedom? Or their own prejudiced fears that scream safety put into play?

Keith feels like he’s on the precipice of something big, and he’s blind to which step is going to lead him over the edge.

The man across the table smiles; charming, cunning, utterly tired, a little scared. He came to them with weapons meant to ensure a safe passage through unknown stars, a ship as capable as any from the war, and yet he never once lifted a finger but to raise his hands in surrender.

Does he too feel like he is standing before some great unknown that may change the rest of his life? Did he feel that before jumping realities? Could he fathom the danger he would face? The hatred? Had he been prepared to be taken prisoner like this? Is that why he handed himself over so freely? Was this part of his unknown nefarious plan Krolia and Kolivan were so afraid of or was he going in blind on this and just as afraid of them?

Sinking slightly in his seat Keith sighs. Choices like routes for provisions to nearby galaxies and assisting in re-homing peoples to new compatible planets he was good at. Battle tactics, training, finding new Blades, peace negotiations, he could do all those things without a hiccup. But this? He didn't even know where to begin with this.

How was Keith supposed to deal with an alternate reality Lotor trying prove he was not the same as the Lotor who caused such suffering and died in this reality years ago?

**Author's Note:**

> For cherryburlesque here on Ao3. She held RP hostage from me until I wrote a Keitor piece by myself without her even beta'ing, so now I am holding this from her in chapters instead of uploading it as a single large story.


End file.
